Hegseth and Rubio to brief members of Congress on boat strikes as questions mount
Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog.
This morning we start with the news that president Donald Trump’s top Cabinet officials on national security, Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio, are due on Capitol Hill to brief members of Congress amid investigations into US military vessel strikes in the Caribbean.
The briefing from the defense secretary and secretary of state comes as questions mount over the escalation of military force and deadly boat strikes in international waters near Venezuela. The Associated Press notes that lawmakers have been examining the 2 September attack as they sift through the rationale for a broader US military buildup in the region that increasingly appears pointed at Venezuela.
On Monday night, the US military said it attacked three more boats believed to have been smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing eight people.
“We have thousands of troops and our largest aircraft carrier in the Caribbean — but zero, zero explanation for what Trump is trying to accomplish,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.
Key events
US lost 105,000 jobs in October and added 64,000 in November, according to delayed data
Michael Sainato
The US labor market grew by more than expected last month, recovering some of the damage inflicted by the federal government shutdown, according to official data.
An estimated 105,000 jobs were lost in October, and 64,000 were added in November, a highly-anticipated report showed today. Jobs growth was higher in November than anticipated by many economists, with a consensus forecast of some 40,000 jobs added.
But the headline unemployment rate continued to climb – and hit 4.6%, a four-year high, last month – amid apprehension around the strength of the US economy.
Previous estimates for overall jobs growth in August and September were also downgraded, from a drop of 4,000 to 26,000, and from growth of 119,000 to 108,000, respectively.
The latest jobs numbers, typically released monthly, were delayed due to the government shutdown. Federal government jobs declined by 162,000 in October, and 6,000 in November.
The figures arrive against a tumultuous background for the US’s economic data, once regarded as the gold standard in government data.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced that full October jobs data would not be released and November’s jobs data was delayed due to the 43-day federal government shutdown and questions have been raised about its accuracy.
Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell warned last week that the data from the BLS should be treated with a “skeptical eye” while the hangover left from the shutdown works through the system.
Ilhan Omar says Trump’s repeated attacks fuel climate of political violence
David Smith
US congresswoman Ilhan Omar has warned that Donald Trump’s repeated personal attacks and dehumanising rhetoric are fuelling a climate of political violence that could have dangerous consequences.
Speaking days after the president called for her to be thrown out of the country, Omar said Trump’s incendiary language reaches “the worst humans possible” and encourages them to act.
“We’ve had people incarcerated for threatening to kill me,” she told the Guardian in an interview at her Washington office. “We have people that are being prosecuted right now for threatening to kill me and so it is something that does stay in the back of our minds. But I also worry about those people finding someone who looks like me in Minneapolis or across the country and thinking it is me and harming them.”
Trump made the remarks at a rally-style event last week in Pennsylvania, where supporters chanted “Send her back!” after the president pushed a baseless conspiracy theory that Somali-born Omar married her own brother to become a US citizen. The Democrat, who arrived in the US as a refugee aged 12 and became a citizen at 17, described Trump’s fixation as “vile” and an “unhealthy and creepy obsession”.
The Minnesota congresswoman said the attacks followed a familiar pattern. “When things aren’t going well for him … cue the bigotry,” she said, accusing Trump of deflecting from his failure to address cost-of-living pressures. “It’s the same playbook and he just goes back to it; he doesn’t know anything else.”
Starmer says Trump legal action is a matter for the BBC
Across the pond today, Keir Starmer’s office has said that any legal action against the BBC was a matter for the broadcaster but the UK government supported its independence.
It comes after Donald Trump finally filed his lawsuit demanding damages worth up to to $10bn for the way a BBC Panorama documentary – which aired over a year ago – edited a speech he gave to supporters on 6 January 2021 before they attacked the US Capitol.
“Any legal action is a matter for the BBC itself. They’ve made clear they believe there’s no case around the broader point of defamation or libel, but that’s for them and their legal teams to engage with,” a spokesperson for the UK prime minister told reporters.
“We will always defend the principle of a strong, independent BBC as a trusted, relied-upon national broadcaster, reporting without fear or favour. But as we’ve also consistently said, it’s vitally important that they act to maintain trust, correcting mistakes quickly when they occur.”
My colleague Andrew Sparrow notes on our UK politics live blog: “Starmer has, up to now, done his best to avoid getting embroiled in this row, arguing that the BBC is operationally independent and that this is a matter for the corporation and the president to settle themselves. Although there were suggestions at one point that he and Trump would speak about the dispute, that does not seem to have happened. However, he may find it hard to remain uninvolved as this goes on. The lawsuit has been filed as there is evidence in other areas – trade policy, for example – that US-UK relations are no longer quite as warm as they were at the time of the state visit.”
On Monday night the US military said it launched a fresh round of deadly strikes on foreign vessels suspected of trafficking narcotics, killing eight people.
The US Southern Command posted footage of the strikes on social media on Monday, announcing it had hit three vessels in international waters.
“Intelligence confirmed that the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and were engaged in narco-trafficking,” US Southern Command said in a post on X.
The black-and-white footage showed the vessels moving through the water before being consumed by large explosions.
The closed-door congressional briefings with Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth come as the US is building up warships, flying fighter jets near Venezuelan airspace and seizing an oil tanker as part of its campaign against Nicolás Maduro, who has insisted the real purpose of the US military operations is to force him from office.
A reminder that the Trump administration has not sought any authorization from Congress for action against Venezuela. But lawmakers objecting to the military incursions are pushing war powers resolutions toward potential voting this week.
The administration’s exclusion of Congress has led to problematic military actions, experts told the Associated Press, particularly the strike that killed two people who had climbed on top of part of a boat that had been damaged in an initial attack.
Congress has received little information about why or how the US military was conducting a campaign that has destroyed more than 20 boats and killed at least 95 people.
Hegseth and Rubio to brief members of Congress on boat strikes as questions mount
Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog.
This morning we start with the news that president Donald Trump’s top Cabinet officials on national security, Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio, are due on Capitol Hill to brief members of Congress amid investigations into US military vessel strikes in the Caribbean.
The briefing from the defense secretary and secretary of state comes as questions mount over the escalation of military force and deadly boat strikes in international waters near Venezuela. The Associated Press notes that lawmakers have been examining the 2 September attack as they sift through the rationale for a broader US military buildup in the region that increasingly appears pointed at Venezuela.
On Monday night, the US military said it attacked three more boats believed to have been smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing eight people.
“We have thousands of troops and our largest aircraft carrier in the Caribbean — but zero, zero explanation for what Trump is trying to accomplish,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.
